Crime Spells

“The guy was an asswipe pimp. Won’t hear me disagree.”

“I did not hear that,” said the tech. He was fiddling with the DVD player. “I’m not even in the room, and if I am in the room, I’ve turned off my hearing aid.” His tone changed. “Whoa, we got a DVD here.”

“So let’s see what our bad boy here was watching,” I said.

The film was clearly homemade but grainy, as if it might be a transfer from a VCR tape. It felt… old.

The room could’ve been anywhere, and the camera stayed tight on a single bed with a dirty brown blanket and a single pillow. No pillowcase. Nothing on the walls I could see right off the bat, though there might have been something on the corner of a night table protruding into the frame. Cigarette pack? And something green and white on the bed, near the pillow. Something else propped alongside. No sound.

A girl lay over the blanket, her head propped on the pillow. Ten, maybe twelve years old. She was Asian, with long black hair scraped back in a ponytail. She was naked and when she moved, she did so sluggishly as if moving through water. Drugged.

The man was also naked except for the black ski mask. There might have been something on his right ass cheek-a large mole, maybe-but I couldn’t be sure. He loomed over the bed, then turned and flashed a V. Then he reached to his right, somewhere off-camera.

When his hand came back, I saw the tongue of a clear plastic bag in his fist.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said the tech.

Kay let go of a small, sick gasp. “God.”

I didn’t say anything, but I knew: God had as much to do with it as the Tooth Fairy.

It took perhaps eight or ten horrible minutes, and that was only because he didn’t flip her onto her stomach and tighten the plastic bag until the very end. Even then, he prolonged the moment, teasing her, rolling the plastic away from her gaping mouth so she might gulp a precious breath or two before cinching the bag tight once more.

Kay was crying. The color was gone from the tech’s face. I was dry-eyed and shaking, my guts in knots, a black rage blooming in my chest.

Made me want to make an arrest somewhere dark and faraway. Maybe have a little accident, or something.

Something.

III

Jane Doe, mute and catatonic, had been taken to George Washington University Hospital.

The ER was hopping, so the bars must’ve closed. In the waiting room, the air smelled like dirty socks, musty and close; there was a motley assortment of frightened relatives, squalling kids with dead-tired moms in do-rags, the odd broken arm or leg.

In back, I waited behind the nurses’ station. Nothing really going tonight. An MVA in one trauma bay: a weeping young blonde girl in a neck brace and torn blue jeans. A couple of heart attacks-that high mosquito whine of defibrillators charging, someone bawling, “Clear!”

One big moose with steely Old Testament prophet hair and a scruff of white beard. A Sixties throwback: black leather jacket with matching leather chaps, boots, aviator sunglasses in a breast pocket. He was Bay 4, very drunk, very busy bleeding all over his Grateful Dead t-shirt and loudly harassing an earnest-looking female medical student, yelling that he’d taken worse in ’Nam and just needed a “goddamned needle …”

Across from Jerry Garcia’s stunt double, I spotted an Asian family. Two women in their, oh, forties, fifties and one middle-aged guy clustered around a gurney. A shriveled, skeletal-looking guy with sickly yellow skin lay motionless as a mummy, tucked beneath a sheet. His bald head was cadaverous, the skin stretched tight across his skull. His black eyes were dull, fixed. Not just old. Ancient. There were blue-black sooty smudges on his forearms and several more on his neck.

Hmmm. In a fire, maybe?

Maybe it was because they were Asian, and I’d just seen that damn film. To this day, I don’t know why they drew my attention. Now very curious, I tossed a glance at the whiteboard. which listed, in blue felt marker, each bay by problem.

Jerry Garcia was in 4: ETOH, lac. Doctorese for a drunk done busted his head.

My Jane Doe was in Bay 8: ?Sz.? Head trauma Neuro. Little red dot signifying she was a police case. As if the shiny black shoes visible beneath the drawn curtain weren’t the uniform assigned to keep tabs on my suspect, and her being cuffed to the gurney wasn’t like, you know, a giveaway.

The Asian family occupied Bay 7: Ψ.

Psychiatry. Hmmm.

“Detective Saunders?” A squat, utterly humorless doctor with gimlet, pewter-gray eyes and pale, nearly translucent lips stuck out his hand. The words Phillip Gerber, M.D. and Neurology were stitched in blue above the left breast pocket of his white doctor’s coat. Ten to one, no one called him Phil. “Dr. Gerber. I’m the neurologist on the case.” Just in case I couldn’t read.

Gerber’s palm was soft. Like shaking hands with a grub. “So what can you tell me about our Jane Doe?” I asked, taking back my hand.

“Well, she’s no longer mute, for starters. Her name’s Lily Hopkins. Don’t have an age or place of residence, but we’re ru

“She’s responsive? Can I speak with her?”

“Yes, in a moment.” He’d fingered up a chart and was now flipping pages. “Her neurological examination is unremarkable. Blood work was negative except for some alcohol in her system…”

I waited while he droned through the negatives. In Bay 4, I saw the medical student twitch a curtain around Jerry Garcia’s gurney. She was pissed but trying to look as though getting cussed out by a drunken, bloody Sixties throwback was something you just took in stride. Her eyes briefly flicked my way. Lingered a sec, a sparrow of some emotion flitting across her face. I raised my eyebrows in my best yeah, you really got an asshole there expression. She got that. The corner of her mouth twitched in a tiny smirk as she slid behind the nurses’ station, wrote Surg and Ψ on the whiteboard, then sat with the chart about two chairs down from where I stood with Gerber.

When Gerber came up for air, I said, “So you’re thinking…?”

He didn’t look pleased at being derailed. Good. “I’ll be honest, Detective. For the record, I’m not a fan of psychiatric diagnoses, though I’m no expert. They’re only descriptive, not etiological. Having said that… You’re familiar with multiple personality?”

“A little.”

He stared at me a moment. “Well, you took that in stride. Mention DID to a detective or lawyer, and they roll their eyes.”

I chose my words carefully. “I’ve seen a few things. Is she a multiple?”

Gerber’s lips thi

Over Gerber’s head Jerry Garcia hove into view, swaying. He’d changed into one of those flimsy hospital gowns. A wide gauze wrap stained with rust was wrapped around his scalp like a bandana. He listed, pulling hard to port, tacking for the wall to hold himself up.

I said to Gerber, “So what are you saying?”

To my right, a slender doctor rounded the corner behind the nurses’ station and touched the medical student’s shoulder. I laid odds she was the shrink. Just… something about her, the way she carried herself like an eye of calm in the center of a hurricane. Self-possessed. Confident.

She was also stu

Her name was embroidered in blue thread above the left breast pocket: Sarah Wylde, M.D. Below that: Psychiatry.